July 20, Juneau

We started out this morning at The Shrine of St. Therese; a beautiful little stone Church and Shrine right on the coast. It was built during the depression and is absolutely wonderful. From there we went to the Mendenhall Glacier National Park and were very surprised to run into Fran Brune and his wife from Lake Panorama. They are visiting their son in Anchorage and came over to Juneau to go fishing and see the sites. Sandi and I had lunch at a Mexican restaurant in the heart of historic downtown then went to the city museum. They had an interesting 30-minute film about the history of Juneau but the museum was a disappointment. The museum is probably just a good as some of the others we have seen but we have been to several and a lot of the information is the same. Think we will skip them for awhile. After visiting the museum we stopped at the famous Red Dog Saloon for a beer then went all the way---to the end of the road. The road north out of Juneau is 40 miles through the rain forest to the end so if you live in Juneau, and want to get away from it all, that’s as far as you can go by car. There were a lot of people out there camping, probably trying to get away from tourists. There were 2 cruise ships in town today and the downtown area was very busy with tourists. Juneau is a beautiful town in the heart of the rain forest so everything is so green and lush.